A vice-like gripe

I’ve been reading Sex And The City, the book by Paul Reynolds about the Dublin vice trade. It’s an interesting and informative read that paints a tawdry picture of the bucaneering days of the Irish massage parlour business. That there were undesirables involved in the trade is without question. But overall, that is not the most important conclusion to be drawn from the book. Rather I was struck at the end of it by another feeling entirely…

There has been a lot of talk over the past week about the Book Of Estimates – the official projections on which the Government’s 2004 budget will be based. One of the most striking figures provided for in the estimates is an increase in the allocation, to the Garda Siochana, of e 91 million – an escalational of 9.5 per cent on last year.
There is an element of political expediency in this. The clamour in the media at the moment, in relation to so-called law and order, is deafening.
However well (or ill) judged that may be, there is a widespread feeling that more Gardai are needed on the beat. Most commentators argue that this represents the best way to combat the rise in gang-related crime. Which is fine, as far as it goes. How this increase might be engineered, however, is a different question.
The best way, the prevailing assumption runs, is to throw more money at the problem, providing both for an increase in numbers on the force and for an increase in the amount of overtime being done by Gardai generally. But in a context where the economy is in a mess, the health service is in tatters, and people are being hit with all manner of stealth taxes to try and square the circle, is it justified to spend an extra e91million on policing?
Not in my book, it ain’t.

Now here’s a question: has anyone seriously attempted to look at ways in which money is being wasted by the Gardai?
Let’s forget for now all the crazy stuff that went on in Donegal, which is currently being investigated in the Morris Tribunal. And let’s ignore the slack within the organisation, which that quagmire of corruption and madness reveals.
Instead, focus on Operation Gladiator, the investigation of the brothel trade in Ireland, which is described in Paul Reynold’s book. This was an expensive operation, which was carried out over a number of years. It occupied members of the force at all manner of odd times of the day and night.
It was, by the standards that are conventionally applied to Garda activity, a successful operation. Brothels were closed down. A few people in the sex trade were put behind bars and others were fined. But what did it all really achieve?
Is there any evidence that the number of prostitutes operating in Dublin or elsewhere has been reduced? There isn’t. In fact, if anything, the situation now is worse than before Operation Gladiator was undertaken.
Whatever view you take of the individuals who ran the brothels, the fact is that the women sex workers felt relatively safe in the environment which was typically provided. Now, the same women have been driven out onto the street where conditions are far tougher and they are considerably more vulnerable – and not just to the inclement Irish weather.
In social terms, and in policing terms, in other words, the effort has been utterly spurious, an exercise in appeasement of the kind that appeals to prudes and members of the Legion of Mary.
The alternative solution, and one which I suspect Michael McDowell might privately support, would be to legalise prostitution – to regulate it and also to tax it. Instead of spending money on an attempt to eradicate prostitution that is doomed to failure, the trade would instead provide some of the revenues necessary to deal with problems in the health sector generally.
As an approach, it wouldn’t appeal to the kind of people who favour hypocrisy about sexual matters and who are pleased as punch with the notion that the State can, and does, continue to intrude into what happens sexually between consenting adults. But I have a feeling that most Irish people are well capable of accepting now that this type of meddling is unnecessary and stupid, as well as wasteful. Irish people don’t need to be or want to be treated like children anymore.

Operation Gladiator is just one example of the kind of campaign in which Garda staff and resources – and therefore the resources of the State – are used in a hopelessly wasteful and unproductive way. The same applies, as has been pointed out in hotpress before on a number of occasions, to the drug laws and in particular to the criminalisation and prosecution of people for the use of marijuana.
As Diarmuid Doyle has argued eloquently in the Sunday Tribune, the Gardai always find money to do the things which they want to do. It is a question of priorities. They deployed 200 gardai in Dublin alone in July of this year in a ‘crackdown’ on immigrants that involved more than 300 buildings being raided on a particular day and which produced the spectacularly insignificant result of 15 deportations.
Who decided that this was a good idea? It wasn’t. It was a wrong-headed and arguably racially-driven exercise in pouring money down the toilet, which reflects very badly on the political priorities of the Gardai –and by the way of the Government too. And in the meantime, criminal gangs were arming themselves for whatever nefarious ends they had in mind at the time? Priorities are everything.
What conclusion can we draw from all of this?
Simple. Michael McDowell would do us all a favour if he focussed on getting off the statute books, those laws which result in the misuse or waste of resources by the Gardai.
Alone, it wouldn’t ensure that the money allocated to the force was well used. But it would be a start.